Mouthshut.com Wipes Out 80,000 Fake Profiles

India’s leading consumer review and product discovery platform Mouthshut.com today said it has deleted more than 80,000 fake user profiles, along with reviews posted by these profiles. The portal said the process to weed out fake profiles was completed over a period of six months.

MouthShut receives thousands of reviews each day and the deleted profiles represent a small percentage of the millions of reviews posted on MouthShut.com. The company said it has taken this step after closely monitoring user behaviour on its platform as well
as suspicious reviews, which may be misleading and written explicitly to unscrupulously build or damage the reputation of certain brands. In November 2012, Mouthshut.com had deleted close to 4,100 fake profiles and user accounts in a similar exercise. The online platform hosts reviews of over 8 lakh products and services.

Faisal Farooqui, Founder and CEO of Mouthshut.com said, “We are proud to have built India’s largest online community for people to share their personal and authentic brand experiences. Fake or illegitimate reviews damage not just the brands involved, but also harm the credibility of community, which is unacceptable to us and hence this action.”

He also added: “Through this exercise, we are constantly assuring our community members that Mouthshut.com will do whatever it takes to remain the authentic, trustworthy and neutral consumer reviews platform that they have always expected us to be. We are also encouraging and incentivizing our members to KYC verify their profiles with us”

Mouthshut.com also said that it has set up a special internal department to proactively monitor all suspicious reviews or users posting them. The department uses a combination of advanced screening technologies, automated algorithm and human intervention to ensure that only fake profiles or reviews are removed. MouthShut.com adds that its review rating algorithm has won the approval of consumers, brands and even academics at Harvard University.

Mouthshut.com is widely recognized as a major purchase decision influencer for a wide variety of products and services. The portal features products and services from over hundreds of thousands different brands. The portal has a monthly user base of more than 12 million users across its web, mobile and app platforms. Many leading brands including Aegon Life, Club Mahindra, Kaya Skin Clinic, Lodha Developers and NIIT among others maintain an active customer engagement channel on the portal.

A freelance tech journo and a Computer Graduate who started TechLegends. He has had bylines at a variety of publications that include Ubergizmo, It's Foss, WindowsReport, TechLila, TechReviewPro, and Tech Cocktail.